All Your Blog Are Belong To Us

Neo returns to The Matrix: Part Two

Part Two: Unplugged

When I watched Neo wake up in the real world for the first time, I was then and forever, truly captivated by The Matrix. The movie had just defied every expectation, and everything that I thought it was heading toward to that point. Just like being unplugged from the Matrix, there was no going back for me.

Neo wakes up in the real world

Neo’s rescue from the power plant is visually stunning, imaginative, and exhilarating. The hovercraft Nebuchadnezzar plucks him from the jaws of death; and Morpheus declares, “we’ve done it, Trinity. We’ve found him.”

Schematic of the hovercraft Nebuchadnezzar

We the audience are right along with Neo for the ride, and we only know as much as he does at any given time. Morpheus promises, that the answers are coming, revealing the truth only in slivers. Neo’s body is incredibly frail and must be rebuilt, muscle by muscle. He complains about his eyes hurting, and is told that he has never used them before. That would be a startling realization to be sure. Equally, if not more frightening, is waking up to see plugs and holes all over your body, and even in your head. This scene is treated with the correct amount of suspense, mood, and mystery.

Once he is physically recovered, all Neo can ask, is “what has happened to me?” “More important than what,” Morpheus responds, “is when.” Morpheus reveals that in reality, the year is not 1999, but more likely around 2199, though no human can be exactly sure of what day it is. And finally, he is ready to not just tell, but show Neo, what the Matrix is.

Neo is plugged into the Nebuchadnezzar computer systems, and arrives with Morpheus in the Construct, the humans’ loading program. For me, the Construct is one of the very coolest things about this movie. It uses what is referred to as “residual self image, a mental projection of your digital self.” How awesome is that? You are projected into a virtual world, the program running it knows how you want yourself to look, and makes it happen. Can you imagine how cool it would be to project yourself with whatever clothes, hairstyle, complexion, accessories, and anything else that you could think of?

This scene is one of the key moments of exposition for the entire franchise. Morpheus finally is able to show, and tell, exactly what the Matrix is to Neo; a gigantic computer simulation, built to keep mankind under control, in order to harvest the entire race as a power source.

Morpheus compares humanity to a battery

Now, aside from the shock factor that this revelation produces, how practical is it? Morpheus makes the claim that the human body generates 25,000 BTUs of body heat, but doesn’t take into account the rate of energy being transferred. The amount of energy generated doesn’t mean much without knowing how much is produced in a given amount of time. Is it 25,000 BTUs in a matter of minutes, hours, years? Without knowing that, it is harder to determine the practicality of the machines using humans as a power source. If all that the machines are doing is feeding off of the raw bio-electricity and heat given off by humans, it wouldn’t strike me as very logical. This is because it would require more power to sustain the human population than what the machines would conceivably get back in return.

It would seem that they would have to be utilizing technology containing or related to thermoelectrics and microbial fuel cells, in addition to what Morpheus described as a form of fusion power. We can reasonably surmise that the humans might serve as some form of catalyst for the machines’ fusion power source, and may not exactly be themselves, the direct source of energy for the synthetics. We can also reason that Morpheus either isn’t schooled on the exact science behind the power plants, or he was just purposely dumbing down his explanation for Neo’s sake; after all, even as presented, it is a lot of heavy information to take in.

It is also possible that, in addition to serving as a catalyst for fusion power, the collectively enslaved humans might be providing a huge amount of processing power for a biological supercomputer. In effect, the machines could be using the humans’ minds as biological processors for performing tasks. Conceivably, if that was the case, the machines might be using humans to help process more mundane functions, such as running manufacturing plants, waste management, and other basic needs. The humans might even be helping to process the Matrix itself, unwitting pawns used to run their own prison. Imagine the added irony, that, in a similar way that we use robots to perform mundane or less desirable tasks today, such as assembly line work, the machines might use us for those kinds of things in the future of The Matrix.

Neo freaks out at the revelation, and wants to believe that what he is seeing and hearing is just a bad dream. But now that he has “woken up,” he finds that he can’t go back to “sleep.” And knowing what he does now, why should he really want to? Think about anything you have encountered in your life that was either an epiphany, a grand realization, or some kind of awakening. Once you have experienced that, would you want to go back to the way it was before? Even if it is uncomfortable or unpleasant, is it not preferable to know what is true and what is a lie? Speaking for myself, especially in the realms of spirituality, religion, and seeing the mistakes of human history being repeated even as we speak, I know that I would never want to go back to my own personal Matrix. My own journey through life continues to parallel Neo’s; I may not have all of the answers, but I am grateful for the lessons learned thus far.

* * *

TO BE CONTINUED

Disclaimer: Main image courtesy of http://www.imdb.com. Other images were pulled from http://www.google.com image searches; these images may have appeared on other blog sites or reviews, and I claim no ownership of them. All images are for entertainment and informational purposes only. The Matrix, and related characters and properties are copyrights of Warner Bros. Studios. No copyright infringement is intended.